The newest skin 'dusk' I find very nice, but I saw that the screen is far too small in width when I was working on J.R.R. Tolkien's Family Tree. So, making it a bit bigger might be a clever thing to do.
Moreover, on the Main Page there are references to links on the left (which is fine with the regular skins), whereas all the links in the dusk skin are on the right!

Hehe, ya that skin wasn't designed by me, I just uploaded it testing the different skins. Dusk really isn't made for a wiki our size and is meant for more of a blog style with small amounts of text. I really need to get a decent skinned created because this default one we are using is just too bland, I'd really love to see something that fully integrates with the Tolkien theme. Unfortunately my CSS/PHP/creativity skills are lacking so it's easier said than done. Unfortunately the skin is made to fit a fixed size thus expanding it would ruin the whole header image there, yet another aspect of that skin I dislike. The wiki skins definitely needs to be something that expands with the browser and resolution to provide maximum viewing for those larger monitors. But it is a good example of how powerful CSS/PHP can be with the wiki software and we can really twist this site into anything we want. --Hyarion 11:26, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Alphabetical Links

Is it possible to get a more encyclopedia-like listing under the heading 'the encyclopedia'? I mean, like what they print on the spine of the seperate volumes: Aa-Bl, Bk-Ce etc. In this case it would be: A El - Eld, Eld - Kin etc; this should be done automatically, of course, if possible. It's now such a long, bare list.

Thanks for the input. I agree with you that the bare small list that takes up so much room is not something that should stay for long. I like the idea of having Aa-Bl, etc, although it's not possible to do that dynamically so it would be something we'd have to change manually, but at least it would take up some space there. Another thought I had is something like A - Ardamir, Aragorn... Then B - Bag end, Bilbo.... And just list the first article or two next to the letter, similar to what Encyclopedia of Arda does. I definitely would like to see 'the author' (as well as all the old links) links back but I think for the moment we should work on improving those articles prior to linking them from the main page. This way people don't see those few links and assume that is our entire collection. Thanks again for the input. --Hyarion 19:10, 14 February 2006 (EST)

Wikipedia portal:Middle-earth

Do you guys know this portal? It's meant to organize all Wikipedia articles on Tolkien. So, now's the existentialist question: what are we here for? Why are we here? Does this Wiki add anything to Wikipedia's portal?

Great question! I think in the near future as a community it would be nice if we could come up with sort of a mission statement about what we really do want to accomplish. I know in the back of my head I think Wikipedia has done a great job, but they probably only have 1% of the content that is actually out there. Wikipedia being not Tolkien specific they simply cant have an entire article for every edition of every book published by Tolkien, or information about his relatives, and articles delving deeper into the mine...works of Tolkien. Look at Wookipedia, almost 25,000 articles! Arda is much more complex and has been around a lot longer, we can't let the Star Wars nerds beat out us Tolkien fans. :) But as of the present we already have quite a lot more articles than Wikipedia's Tolkien section, albeit their's are being updated quicker I think we have our eyes farther out into the horizon. Do you have any suggestions for answers? --Hyarion 19:00, 16 February 2006 (EST)

I think the biggest task we're facing at the moment is to get more people involved in this; at this moment, only you and I are frequently adding to it (and I'm 'just' fixing dead links mostly). Have you considered mailing around a bit to get more attention to this Wiki? --Earendilyon 03:02, 17 February 2006 (EST)